The Light and Fallen (15 page)

He reached for the door of the truck but
Samara didn't move. "Are you mad at me?" she asked. "Did I do
something wrong?"

"I have to go." He repeated the words more
forcefully and tugged at the car door, but Samara wouldn't let
go.

"Why!" she shouted. "What is wrong with
you?"

She noticed they were attracting curious
stares from nearby students and lowered her voice. "You tell me I'm
beautiful and you want to be with me. Then you take me to the
overlook, which is practically Lover's Lane, and dance with me, and
kiss me, and make me completely fall for you-," she paused as her
voice cracked. "You make me fall for you, and then you won't even
talk to me?"

"I don't think we should see each other
anymore," Lucian said. He forced the hateful words out in a
monotone. He heard a sharp intake of breath from Samara, but made
himself continue to look straight ahead. He clung to the steering
wheel with all of his strength.

"You were right," Samara raged, "I don't know
you!"

She stepped back and slammed his door so hard
the truck rocked. "You think Jack is a bad person? You're worse! At
least he's honest about who he is."

Lucian cranked the engine and kept his eyes
straight ahead as he reached down and shifted the car into reverse.
He tried not to look, but he couldn't help seeing her pale face as
he pulled out of the parking lot. As he drove away she was fighting
back tears of fury and despair.

Jack watched the scene play out over his
steering wheel with barely suppressed glee.

"Let's go," a voice urged him.

He glanced over in annoyance. He had almost
forgotten that Danica was in the car. He ran a hand up her thigh
and let the tips of his fingers graze beneath the pleated edges of
her skirt. "Shhh."

Samara stood in clear view. She appeared to
be paralyzed with anger. After several long seconds she seemed to
realize that groups of students were stopping to stare at her, and
she turned on her heel and disappeared across the parking lot. He
hadn't been able to hear what Samara and Lucian were saying, but
their body language revealed all the information he needed.

He wanted to gag when he remembered the whole
Homecoming debacle. The sting of being turned down was bad enough,
but running into Samara at the dance, on Lucian's arm, had been
almost unendurable. Whatever Lucian was up to, he had to be
stopped. That assignment was proving difficult, but was nonetheless
straightforward. It was Samara who tormented his ego.

He had become obsessed with seducing her. Not
because he wanted her, but because she'd made it abundantly clear
that she didn't want him. No wasn't an answer he was used to being
given, nor was it one he was willing to accept.

In all the elaborate plots he'd schemed up,
the one barrier that prevented him from getting to Samara was
Lucian. It was obvious that the Dominion had allowed himself to
fall in love. It was a rookie mistake. So foolish. He'd given in to
the girl's human influence so easily. Still, he protected her, and
had significant powers of his own.

Jack had no doubt that he could manipulate
Samara, make her fall for him, but she'd been completely blinded by
Lucian. He'd been unable to find an opportunity that would give him
enough time to charm his way in. Now things were perfect. Lucian
was out of the picture and Samara was alone and vulnerable.
Like
a little lost lamb
, he thought.

He turned up the radio until the windows
vibrated and ignored Danica's whining protests. She was an annoying
one; he'd be glad to be rid of her. She had just been another
diversion to keep boredom from driving him out of his mind. He slid
to a stop at the bottom of her driveway, leaned across her lap, and
pushed open the passenger door.

"I thought we were going to the Burger Hut,"
Danica pouted. She batted her ebony eyes at Jack and tried to look
alluring.

"Change of plans." He reached behind her seat
and pulled her backpack off the floorboard. "Maybe another day. I
remembered somewhere I have to be."

He handed her the backpack and fiddled with
the radio while she reluctantly climbed out of the car. She leaned
down to look at him through the car window and her v-neck shirt
sagged open. "Do you want to come in?" she asked. He could see the
tops of her breasts bouncing as she said, "My parents won't be home
for hours."

For a moment he was tempted. After all, what
would it hurt? He could have her today, and then make his plan to
win over Samara tomorrow.

Instead he decided to take Desiree's advice
and exercise restraint. Samara was different from Danica, and
Amber, and all the other girls that were so eager to go out with
him. She had made it clear that she didn't approve of the amount of
extracurricular activites he had enjoyed since he came to
Wimberley, and he knew he would need to be on his best behavior to
win her over.

"No thanks," he said. He reached over and
pulled the car door shut beneath Danica's nose. If Samara wanted
love and fidelity, then that was what he was going to give her. And
if she wanted something else, he would find a way to give her that
too. He felt an irrepressible grin on his face and hummed a few
lines of the rock ballad playing on the radio. It was the beginning
of a new game, and he was turning over a brand new leaf.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Duncan
drawled. "Cause from here, it looks like things are pretty much
going bad to worse."

Lucian crossed his arms and glared across the
room at Duncan and Sofia. They were sitting shoulder to shoulder on
the white couch with faces that were annoyingly placid. "Really?"
he shouted. "Well you've been filled with such helpful, specific
information to this point, so why don't you tell me what I should
do!"

"We've already told you," Sofia said
quietly.

"No," Lucian exclaimed. "You really haven't.
You've said things that I could've pulled out of a fortune cookie
at a cheap Chinese restaurant, but nothing that actually
means
anything."

They both sat calmly while he raged, and
their silence infuriated him even more. He wanted to get some sort
of a reaction from them, some anger or disappointment that would
match the feelings he had toward himself. "Say something!
Do
something!"

"We don't know what you want from us," Duncan
said. "Do you want us to talk or listen?"

"I want you to tell me what to do!"

"You know we can't do that, because we don't
know. Somehow you're gonna have to find your own way."

Lucian leaned against the back of a chair and
rested his head on his arms. "Are you sure there's a way to find?"
He raised his head and his eyes pleaded with his guardians. "Are
you sure there's more Light than Darkness here?"

Sofia stood up and her eyes snapped. "I am
sure," she said emphatically. "This world is worth fighting
for."

Lucian shook his head and turned away.

"You're doing this to yourself," Sofia said.
"You refuse to follow your heart, you refuse to surrender control,
you refuse to embrace the expectation that you will be led. We told
you things take time here, sometimes a very long time, and unlike
in the Heavenlies you can only live in one sequential minute at a
time. We can't help you or guide you if you won't accept the rules
of this world."

She stepped closer to Lucian and lowered her
voice. "So much depends on you."

"Don't you think I know that?" he said. "I
can feel the weight of the Earth, and every person on it, pressing
down on me, every day."

"Why'd you leave Samara?" Duncan's question
flew across the room and caught him off guard.

Lucian looked back and forth between the two
of them. "You know I had to. I didn't have a choice."

"I don't know that," Duncan responded,
"because it's your heart on the line and not mine, but to my way of
thinking there's always a choice. I said it before, and I'm gonna
say it again. You're better off following what you're drawn
to."

"What are you saying? That I should just keep
dating her, and taking her out on picnics, and falling in love
while the world falls apart?"

"I didn't realize the world was at an end
yet," Duncan said. His voice remained light, but Lucian felt like
his eyes were pinning him against the wall.

"You know what I mean. I don't know what will
happen, but something is wrong with the Timeline, and I'm sure
spending my time in some misguided romance isn't the way to fix
it."

Lucian glowered across the room at Duncan and
silently dared him to respond. He felt like his human urges were
barely under control and he gripped the sides of the chair. If
Duncan said anything else, he wasn't sure he could restrain himself
from throwing the chair at his head.

Sofia seemed to read his thoughts and stepped
to the side, partially blocking Duncan with her slender frame.
"Just ask yourself," she said, "if you're following the way of
love. There are many paths that you can take, many things to guide
you, but we were born of love and we will end in it. If you stay on
that path the journey may be hard, but it will not lead you
astray."

Lucian turned on her angrily. "Your judgment
is impaired. You've lived here too long. You've forgotten your true
natures. Both of you!"

"Maybe you're right," Sofia said. "I like to
think that I lost a part of myself here, but I found it again,
better and stronger than before. You might too, if you would give
up all the things you think you know."

Lucian shook his head. "I can't. It would be
wrong to stay with Samara, to love her like I want, even if I
didn't have a mission to accomplish. We're too different."

"You wouldn't be the first, you know," Duncan
said. "To fall in love with a human girl."

"It doesn't matter. Even if there is
theoretically a way that we could be together, even for a little
while, it wouldn't last. It couldn't." He gestured across the room
to Sofia and Duncan. "Unlike the two of you," he said, "she can
only die once. She wouldn't be safe with me. Knowing that I'm
hurting her, that I'm causing her pain, is breaking my heart, but
it's the only way. To save her, I have to let her go."

Lucian returned to school every day, but he
didn't speak to Samara again. In fact, she rarely saw him. She was
still reeling, unable to explain to herself how things between them
had changed so swiftly. She wanted to hate him, at least that would
give her a place to channel the pain and anger caused by his public
rejection, but she couldn't find it in herself.

Whenever she did catch a glimpse of Lucian in
the hallway or passed him driving around town, he looked as
tormented as she felt. After her conversation with Sofia, she was
sure that there were things in Lucian's life she didn't understand.
What were his secrets?
she wondered.
Where was his
family? What was the decision that he had to make?

Dina had chosen to avoid the subject of
Lucian altogether. When Samara came home from school after their
confrontation and locked herself in her bedroom, her mom hadn't
asked any questions or tried to force her to get out of bed.
Instead, she'd provided comfort in the form of lemon cupcakes and
steamed milk. Samara knew her mom would listen if she wanted to
talk, but she also knew there was nothing Dina could say that would
ease the ache in her heart. It was better, she decided, to talk
about him as little as possible. If she did that, then maybe he
would eventually take up less space in her heart and in her
thoughts.

Carin was not so delicate. "What are you
going to do?" she demanded one morning close to the beginning of
the Christmas holidays.

"There's nothing to do," Samara shrugged. "I
can't make him want to be with me."

"I can tell he's not over you," Carin argued.
"I sit behind him in study hall, and he looks terrible!"

"That does make me feel a little better,"
Samara said, "but he was clear when he said he didn't want to see
me anymore."

"You can change his mind. Appeal to him!"

"I don't want to!"

She immediately felt guilty for snapping at
Carin. As she watched, her friend's face fell and she dropped her
eyes to the floor. "I'm sorry," she said. "You might be right.
Maybe I could appeal to him, or make some romantic gesture like
stand outside his window in the rain. And maybe I could get him to
change his mind, but I don't want to."

"But-" Carin sputtered, "you could be
together again. Isn't that what you want?"

"I want to be with someone that wants to be
with me, without having to crawl, or beg, or plead, or plan."
Samara sighed. "He made his choice, and I'm going to accept
it."

She put her hand up as Carin opened her mouth
to protest. "Are you my friend?"

"Yes! That's why I'm trying to help you-"

"Stop!" Samara said. She raised her voice
above Carin's and cut her off. "I'm telling you that I don't want
to talk about Lucian any more, or hear how he looks, or wonder what
he's doing. If I change my mind and I do want to talk about him,
then I'll let you know, but until then, no more."

"But-"

"No more!" Samara said firmly. "There are
plenty of other people to talk about."

Carin sighed deeply. "Fine."

She glanced around trying to find another
subject of conversation. "So Jack quit dating Danica."

"Oh, really?" Samara picked up a stack of
letters and carried them over to a file cabinet. "Who's the new
flavor?"

"No one."

Samara shot a look at Carin. "What do you
mean, 'No one?'"